Some mobile researchers think future networks will reach into higher frequencies to keep up with traffic, and the Federal Communications Commission wants to know how it might help to make that possible.

Most of the world’s cellular networks send calls and data traffic over frequencies below 6GHz. Growing demand is expected to put the squeeze on those spectrum bands in a few years, and one way out may be to start using largely untapped frequencies in so-called millimeter-wave bands. Though experts say most of those bands are still lightly used, unleashing smartphones and other mobile devices on them would require some regulatory changes.

fcc headquarters FCC/Flickr

To get ahead of that game, on Oct. 17 the FCC announced a Notice of Inquiry to ask what new high-frequency mobile technology might achieve and which bands might be best to use. New advances could make millimeter-wave radios part of 5G, the next generation of mobile communications, the FCC said in a news release. That generation is expected to reach the real world around 2020.

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